False confessions happen, and they happen with a surprising and baffling frequency–approximately 25 percent of wrongful convictions involve some sort of false confession. We know some of the reasons that false confessions occur, including police coercion, but the psychology of why there are so many false confessions remains fuzzy. But a new study conducted at Michigan State University may shed some light on that question–it’s really pretty easy to get a false confession out of an individual who is sleep deprived.

Kimberly Fenn, who runs the sleep lab at Michigan State University and Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California-Irvine, were joined by two of their former PhD students for the study. The study involved 88 student participants who were asked to complete simple computer tasks, but were warned not to press the “escape” key on the keyboard. The researchers told the participants that if they hit that key, the data from the study would be lost. Then, they made half the students stay up all night, while the other half got a full night’s sleep. The next morning, they were interrogated about whether or not that they had pressed the escape key and erased all that data. According to the study, 50 percent of the participants who were sleep-deprived gave a false confession when first asked, in comparison to the 18 percent of not-sleepy students. When a second opportunity was given, 68.2 of the sleep-deprived subjects confessed to something they didn’t do, in comparison to 38.6 of the well-rested participants.

While it may not make sense to most of us why someone would give a false confession, being interrogated is often exhausting and frustrating, and sometimes abusive, and individuals may just want it to stop. So, a person being interrogated may give a false confession just to get the interrogator off their backs, assuming that because they’re obviously not guilty it won’t really matter and their innocence will be quickly discovered. Saul Kassin of Williams College explained:

There are two types of false confessions that come about from police interrogation…These are situations in which people who know they are innocent reach their breaking point. They are under stress and will do whatever it takes to escape the immediate short-term punishing situation—even if it involves a possible negative consequence later.

He also told Smithsonian Magazine that another way that false confessions come about is that someone becomes convinced of their own guilt based on the evidence he is shown and “internalizes” it. Sleep deprivation could play a role in both of those types of false confessions, and it’s fairly common for suspects to be interrogated for long periods of time or at night. According to the Innocence Project:

The report says that around 17 percent of custodial interrogations happen between the normal sleeping hours of midnight and 8:00 a.m., and that the majority of false confessions occur during interrogations which last longer than 12 hours, with many lasting longer than 24 hours.

So, will we start seeing a change to the way that police interrogate suspects? Maybe, although this study on students obviously isn’t a perfect match to the conditions faced by potential suspects. But it does shed some light on a phenomenon that can be hard to understand–and that’s going to be a first step to combatting the alarmingly high number of false confessions in the U.S.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Lewis & Clark Law School is now offering its students an innovative way to gain hands-on experience with criminal law. A new clinic called the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic is a collaboration between the law school and the Oregon Justice Resource Center (OJRC) and will benefit both law school students, and members of the community in need of legal resources.

The OJRC is a non-profit founded by Lewis & Clark Law School graduates in 2011. Its mission is to:

Dismantle systemic discrimination in the administration of justice by promoting civil rights and enhancing the quality of legal representation for traditionally underserved communities. In the spirit of this mission and in collaboration with other like-minded organizations, OJRC believes in an integrative, three-pronged approach to systemic change and achieving its goals in the core areas of criminal defense and wrongful convictions: 1) advocating for individual clients and systemic change in the law; 2) educating future social justice lawyers; and 3) engaging the community in a dialogue about our justice system.

I had the opportunity to talk to law Professor Aliza Kaplan, who is supervising the clinic, about its inception and goals. She explained that the students who are involved in the clinical program will have the option of being involved in three different projects, providing different ways to engage in the criminal justice system.

The first project involves working in tandem with the Oregon Innocence Project. The Oregon Innocence Project was launched by the OJRC just last year, and focuses on exonerating those who have been wrongly convicted by investigating their claims, re-testing crucial evidence like DNA, and following up on appeals if needed.

Another avenue for students to get involved is the Criminal Justice Project. It focuses on reforming the Oregon criminal justice system in a number of ways, including an arm that works directly on death penalty reform. The students who participate in the Criminal Justice Project will also have the opportunity to work on Eighth Amendment  and sentencing issues and to get involved in the Amicus Curiae Project. The Amicus Curiae Project “provides amicus assistance on the state level in cases that present significant social justice issues that are related to criminal defense, civil rights, juvenile justice, or are of particular importance to traditionally underserved communities,” says Kaplan.

The final project that clinical students can work on is a new endeavor called the “Reentry Law Project,” a joint project with Mercy Corps, which will provide much-needed legal services for people once they’ve been released from prison. There are myriad legal issues that people who have been released from prison face, including problems with immigration, healthcare, and housing.

The clinic offers new opportunities to students at Lewis & Clark Law School, and a valuable service to the Portland community. Law students interested in criminal justice issues were lacking an outlet through which to gain hands-on experience. Since the inception of the OJRC, students have been volunteering with the organization and gaining experience working in this field. The new clinical program will increase student involvement, participation, and benefits while meeting community need.

The OJRC has only been around since 2011, and the social justice issues it faces head on are just beginning to be recognized in Oregon. In doing so, the OJRC is tackling a massive field–the conversation about the inadequacies and difficulties inherent in our criminal justice system have never been more visible than they are now. Law school students, regardless of where they are attending school, are on the precipice of entering a legal environment that is being forced to confront these issues–getting hands on experience while still in law school can only strengthen the skills of the students once they enter that environment.

As Professor Kaplan explained to me, the OJRC has taken on a broad remit as an advocate for reform across a range of criminal legal issues as well as providing client services and raising the funds and awareness that are crucial to its success. For students, being part of the OJRC in an official role through the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic provides insights that cannot be found in a classroom. For the organization itself, the students’ contribution allows more to be achieved in less time, helping the OJRC to advance its mission in Oregon more quickly and more profoundly.

Lewis & Clark Law School

With robust practical skills options, flexible scheduling, and a faculty invested in your success, Lewis & Clark Law School is an ideal place to start a legal career. The school’s innovative programs, such as the NCVLI, CJRC, and the criminal law certificate program, offer students the opportunity to learn and work in a rigorous, collegial environment in scenic Portland, Oregon. Learn more at law.lclark.edu. Lewis & Clark Law School is a partner of Law Street Creative. The opinions expressed in this author’s articles do not necessarily reflect the views of Law Street.

https://law.lclark.edu/

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When our country’s highest regarded forensic technicians testify that they’ve found incriminating forensic DNA matches, that testimony is usually considered courtroom gold. However, a new investigation into a history of potentially flawed testimony given by the FBI has revealed incredibly damning evidence that could cripple the agency’s reputation for years to come.

The Justice Department and the FBI have officially acknowledged that an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials where it offered evidence against a criminal defendant. The evidence dates back to before 2000, and is being called one of the country’s largest forensic scandals to date.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project teamed up to assist the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence. Their findings were startling. According to the Washington Post, the FBI has admitted that 26 out of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.

Overall, the FBI identified for review approximately 2,500 cases in which the FBI Lab reported a hair match. Current findings found flawed testimony was given in 257 of 268 trials. Of those, 342 defendants’ cases have been completed, and include 32 defendants sentenced to death. Fourteen defendants have been executed or died in prison. There are now about 1,200 cases awaiting review.

According to the Washington Post, defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District are being notified to determine whether this new information offers opportunities for appeal. But the defendants shouldn’t necessarily expect to be exonerated. The FBI’s erroneous testimony may not have been the only evidentiary factor contributing to their guilty verdicts.

Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, commented on the investigation into the FBI to the Post saying,

The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster…We need an exhaustive investigation that looks at how the FBI, state governments that relied on examiners trained by the FBI and the courts allowed this to happen and why it wasn’t stopped much sooner.

Part of the problem plaguing the FBI’s forensic unit is the ability for a hair sample to appear to be a “near certain” match, when in actuality its authenticity cannot be confirmed. The Washington Post writes,

The review confirmed that FBI experts systematically testified to the near-certainty of ‘matches’ of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their case work.

In reality, there is no accepted research on how often hair from different people may appear the same. Since 2000, the lab has used visual hair comparison to rule out someone as a possible source of hair or in combination with more accurate DNA testing

This sheer percentage of these cases linked to flawed testimony is frightening and calls into question the actual level of “justice” our justice system has provided for these defendants. The government taking responsibility for over three decades of mistakes was a good first step, but we’re still waiting to see how the state authorities and the courts respond to these findings.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A record number of inmates imprisoned for crimes they did not commit were exonerated in 2014, according to a newly released report. The National Registry of Exonerations–a project by the University of Michigan Law School–released the report Tuesday boasting a total of 125 exonerations in the United States.

This was a significant increase compared to the previous highest total of 91 in both 2013 and 2012. In 2014, Texas led the list of number of exonerations with 39, followed by New York with 17, and Illinois with seven. The 37 percent increase is largely driven by an increase in drug related exonerations, most notably 33 separate exonerations in Harris County (Houston), Texas, due to an upped focus on reviewing arrests there.

Texas led the country in exonerations last year, with 39, followed by NY with 17 http://t.co/qMKDsPlNClpic.twitter.com/ARp6iwTbe1

— Tierney Sneed (@Tierney_Megan) January 27, 2015

Many of these exonerations involved inmates pleading guilty to drug possession when they had no such drugs. Inger Chandler, head of the Conviction Review Section in the Harris County District Attorney’s office, hypothesized the reasons behind this, saying:

Some probably thought the pills or powders they were carrying contained illegal drugs when in fact they didn’t; others – especially defendants with criminal records, who generally cannot post the comparatively high bails that are set for them and who risk substantial terms in prison if convicted – agreed to attractive plea bargains at their initial court appearances, despite their innocence, rather than remain in pretrial custody and risk years in prison.

Pleading guilty to something you didn’t do apparently isn’t that uncommon. According to the report, a record breaking 47 of the 125 defendants were exonerated of crimes that they actually pled guilty to, continuing a growing trend that was evident last year as well.

While groups like the Innocence Project have devoted themselves for years to helping the “not guilty” behind bars, this report attributes the spike in exonerations to growing law enforcement cooperation and newly formed prosecutorial “Conviction Integrity Units” (CIU). This shows that the legal system is beginning to take more action to address innocence claims that were traditionally ignored. Prosecutors among these 15 CIUs have begun to tackle what they call a serious problem of “erroneous convictions” by reexamining cases with claims of innocence, accounting for 49 of the 2014 exonerations. University of Michigan law professor and co-founder of the registry told USA Today:

I think there is a seachange in the thinking related to the fallibility of the criminal justice system. It turns out that (wrongful conviction) is a much more common problem than everybody realizes.

DNA testing wasn’t the magical cure-all for freeing these prisoners that shows like “CSI” would have you believe. Only 22 cases involved DNA evidence, accounting for 18% of the exonerations.

The crimes most commonly exonerated since 1989 have been either homicides or sex-related. Some of these prisoners (mostly male) have been behind bars for decades awaiting their freedom. Take Ricky Jackson for example, who was wrongfully convicted of murder, attempted murder and robbery in 1975. Jackson spent 39 years, the longest time ever served by an exoneree, in an Ohio prison until he was acquitted after a witness recanted the false testimony that put him behind bars.

According to the New York Times, the felony convictions system has a success rate of 99.973 percent, making the error rate .027 percent. As impressive as that may seem, given the high levels of incarceration in the United States, that means that there are still undoubtedly more inmates still incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. This report’s startling numbers may provide some of these prisoners hope in their own legal battles.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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